The standard turbulator-type combustor (also known as the EGR combustor) for the automotive Stirling engine is basically illustrated in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. It consists of a radial in-flow turbulator mounted on top of a combustor shell. The combustion air flows into a turbulator, which inputs a large amount of swirl to the air, and exits out the bottom of the turbulator. At the exit of the turbulator, the air tends to be concentrated in an annular ring at the bottom of the turbulator. Downstream of this, the air flow expands to fill in the center of the region below the turbulator, and also expands beyond the turbulator outer diameter. A fuel nozzle sprays a finely atomized fuel spray into the air stream as shown in FIG. 2. The air and fuel do not mix appreciably in the turbulator, but rather below it. This results in relatively poor air/fuel mixing especially if the fuel spray is too fine and, also can result in an unstable flame, particularly under cold conditions and low to moderate fuel flows.